Lupita Nyong’o (left) and Chiwetel Ejiofor in ’12 Years a Slave’ directed by Steve McQueen, based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 book.

Fox Searchlight/Everett

Director Steve McQueen said “it’s been amazing” to see a resurgence in Solomon Northup’s book, “Twelve Years a Slave.” Here’s how it shaped his film.

Solomon Northup was born and raised a free black man in New York in the 1800s, enjoying “the blessings of liberty” until the age of 33, when he was drugged and kidnapped, sold into slavery, and forced to spend the next 12 years in bondage on the Louisiana plantations.

Freed with the help of a Canadian named Samuel Bass, Northup was eventually reunited with his family in New York. He decided to write his extraordinary story when “it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public.”

The book, “Twelve Years a Slave,” was published in 1853 and is a meticulous chronology of Northup’s experiences on the plantations, including instructions on how to plant sugar cane and pick cotton, descriptions of his masters’ mannerisms and modes of punishment, and observations about his fellow slaves. There are harrowing passages, such as when he is forced by his master to whip another slave, and unexpected moments of poetry, such as when he describes the place where he suffered for more than a decade:

“There are few sights more pleasant to the eye, than a wide cotton field when it is in the bloom. It presents an appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow.”

Though the book is regarded by historians as one of the most important records of slavery, Northup’s “Twelve Years a Slave” fell into relative obscurity, remaining in the shadow of other books such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and Frederick Douglass’s 1845 autobiography of his life born into slavery until his escape to a free state.

But today, Northup’s book is on non-fiction bestseller lists (for editions by various publishers), fueled by the feature film “12 Years a Slave” directed by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup, Michael Fassbender as plantation owner Edwin Epps and Lupita Nyong’o as fellow slave Patsey. The book is #3 on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list under Non-Fiction E-Books. As of this writing, Solomon Northup is the #5 author on Amazon’s list for top Kindle eBooks under Biographies & Memoirs, and #9 on the list for print books under the same category. There is also a new Penguin reissue of the book tied to the film, which Penguin said has been the imprint’s top seller for the past several weeks since its Sept. 1 publication, with sales increasing each week.

Before ever hearing of the book, McQueen had the intent to make a film about a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. He wasn’t sure where to start until his wife, cultural critic and historian Bianca Stigter, called his attention to “Twelve Years a Slave.”

“All of a sudden this book appears which is identical to my idea,” McQueen said in an interview. “I think that we all think we have an idea of what slavery is, but every turn of the page was just a revelation — the intricate, microscopic detail to the narrative just opened my eyes.”

McQueen, who lives in Amsterdam with Stigter and their two children, said when he first read Northup’s account, he saw an immediate connection to Anne Frank, who spent two years in hiding in a secret annex of an Amsterdam canal house, which is now a museum. McQueen said “Twelve Years a Slave” should be required reading in the same way that “The Diary of A Young Girl” is in many schools. “It’s been amazing” to see the resurgence in Northup’s book, he said.

As he studied the book for the first time, images came to his mind for his film, but it was when he was on location that those images evolved and came into sharper relief, once he encountered the heat, the architecture, and the spirits of the historic plantations in Louisiana. “Those trees have seen everything,” he said.

A section of the book describes an attempted hanging of Northup from one of those trees. Northup’s life was spared, but he was left bound to the tree, the rope still dangling from his neck, forced to stand in the heat all day. “I would gladly have given a long year of service to have been enabled to exchange the heated oven, as it were, wherein I stood, for a seat beneath their branches,” Northup writes.

In the corresponding scene in the film, McQueen doesn’t spare audiences – he films Northup hanging for an extended period, past the point of discomfort.

“It’s about holding the shot, and being brave to do that. It’s about being economic with that situation too,” he said. “You see the slaves exiting their cabins slowly, being cautious and to some extent not interfering with Solomon. If they touched him, they knew they would have been strung up next to him. So you can see that image of mental torture as you see one of physical torture.”

McQueen tried to remain faithful to the book, with about 80% of the dialogue and script taken from Northup’s account. As with many book-to-film adaptations, one challenge was to translate Northup’s interior, first-person narrative to the screen.

“I think some were talking about voiceover, I said ‘absolutely no way. I’m not interested,’” McQueen said. He and actor Ejiofor turned to silent films, particularly the work of actors Rudolph Valentino and Buster Keaton, to see how they expressed stories through their faces.

In one scene, Ejiofor’s Northup has just shared the truth of his background with Bass (played by Brad Pitt). It’s a plea for help, and it’s terribly dangerous for both Northup and Bass. McQueen’s camera holds a long, close-up shot of Ejiofor watching and waiting, as if the trees all around him hold news of his fate.

“We read people’s faces most of the time,” McQueen said. “We’re quite sharp to understand if you’re telling the truth or not. So it was a case of translating those feelings through his face, his gaze. I always focused on his eyes with every shot, every scene.”

Ejiofor called it “an absolute gift” to have Northup’s book. While the story is particular to one man, Ejiofor said he connected to it as an everyman or everywoman. “I hope that everyone could see themselves in that circumstance and understand that dynamic in such a rich way,” he said.

Actress Nyong’o also studied Northup’s description of her character, Patsey, as having “an air of loftiness in her movement, that neither labor, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy.” Nyong’o, paraphrasing Northup’s words, said “had she been born in a different time, she would be a leader among men.”

“I was definitely aware of how incredible this woman was, and that despite the darkness, she had a light that even Master Epps couldn’t put out,” the actress said. “The thing that I learned mainly while working on this character is that freedom is a human instinct,” she said. “You don’t have to live a day free to know and desire it.”

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